Bringing people together through the arts. A non-profit second-hand bookshop and arts venue in Kenilworth, Warwickshire. Patron: Warren Ellis (Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds, Dirty Three)

This has been an exciting week at the Tree House. Last Saturday, the piano was tuned – hurray! Some people have been playing it already as they browse in the shop, including one tiny girl yesterday who played gently and beautifully – it’s lovely to have a piano, and I hope lots of people will give into the temptation to bash out a tune on it.

Thursday evening we hosted a wonderful event organised by The Wild Hunt, a venture set up to buy the protection of an acre of woodland in Warwickshire through the Woodland Trust. Their fundraising has been so successful that they are well on the way to buying protection of two acres! The event at the Tree House was a mixture of storytelling and music – stories (for grown-ups) from Chloë Lees of Midnight Storytellers UK and music from folk duo Tinkerscuss. They intertwined their talents to provide a spellbinding evening. The finale was a performance from Tinkerscuss of the great Sandy Denny’s Who Knows Where The Time Goes, and it was a stunning conclusion to a wonderful evening that raised lots of funds for the project. The Tree House was very proud to host such an event.

Yesterday Pauline Davies, a stalwart of the Tree House, led a crochet workshop in the afternoon, and as well as the fun the small group appeared to be having, it created a lovely atmosphere in the shop. Such activities are very welcome, especially on Saturday afternoons.

Today we restart the film club, after a couple of weeks of downtime – we are still planning two screenings a week, on Sunday afternoons and Thursday evenings, and today we are showing Dean Spanley, a tribute to Peter O’Toole – a little known film but a gem, a charming and delightful film. On Thursday we will be showing one of my personal all-time favourites, Wings of Desire, a German film by Wim Wenders from 1987, a real beauty of a film on every level.

Several local musicians have been in touch to see if they can come and play in the shop. I am thrilled by this, but also aware of how fragile the future of the shop still is, and unsure of my ability to stage good events. We are not out of the woods yet – but as the Wild Hunt evening showed, being in the woods is an exciting as well as a potentially dangerous place to be. We are a treehouse, a place of shelter amid the beauty and danger of the forest…we hope to remain such a place, and develop as such a place, but the wolves are still prowling.